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edit: but if you move to a decent country in Europe (I'm looking at you, Denmark), you get a huge tax rebate for up to five years if you're a good immigrant (scientist or a highly skilled & educated expert in your field).

What do I get for not showing up on a boat and/or having to be rescued by the coast Guard

And guess who's state reelected Lindsey Graham... And now people are talking about him for a presidential run... Fml

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Come to Germany. We are in need of just about everyone. Seriously. My county always had higher than average unemployment. Recent numbers said 2.6%. mfw It's at 6.3% nationwide. If you work in care / health sector, you just kind of have to show up. Pay is abysmal though. But cost of living is ridiculously low. If you can teach sciences, learn German and you can get a cushy teaching job with more than decent money.

edit: but if you move to a decent country in Europe (I'm looking at you, Denmark), you get a huge tax rebate for up to five years if you're a good immigrant (scientist or a highly skilled & educated expert in your field).

What do I get for not showing up on a boat and/or having to be rescued by the coast Guard

In Denmark? No student aid and (at least threats of) deportation after you've been unemployed for a few years.

(Not a Dane, just an immigrant here. But it's like that in many countries, or it may turn into that soon.)

edit: what Joe Appleby said - go to Germany. Besides, university studies there are free and the universities have many international programs, plus IIRC like 17 universities in Germany are among the top 200 universities.

In part this is due to the Obama Administration having the biggest gap between what was hoped for at the start compared to what has been delivered of any Administration in the modern age.

Yet I fully suspect that the Republicans will be unable to select a candidate that people can stomach in sufficient numbers to win the Whitehouse in 2016.

I don't think so. It's not 'Hope and Change', because that was gone in the last presidential election. No, I think the Democrats lost the midterms because Obama promised that the recovery was under way in the last election, and the swing vote (white, middleclass, suburban) hasn't seen materialise for them. That's why Obama's popularity rates are as low as they are, that's why all Republican candidates did everything they could to put Obama on the ballot now, that's why it was impossible for the Democratic candidates to run on Obama's record (so had to fudge), and that's why the Democrats lost the midterms as badly as they did. They couldn't run on the economy/recovery, while the Republicans could blame them for it.

Now this was never going to be easy for the Democrats. Because of the gerrymandering, the ID laws, the Senate seats that were up, the large amount of money the Republicans pumped in the bring-out-the-vote-effort, but the ongoing decline of the middleclass is why the Democrats lost as badly as they did. Ofcourse the Republicans had a hand in that with their obstructionism in congress etc., but the Republicans were able to blame Obama for that too. And quite frankly, it is a bit of a cop-out for the Democrats as well. They've been looking out for the rich just as much as the Republicans, and although they talk the talk, they don't walk the walk for the middleclass either.

As for Republican candidates in 2016. Scot Walker has been up for election three times in four years. Won everytime when every lefty pundit had him finished, and the Democrats threw everything at him. He's very friendly with the big right-wing donors (Koch Bros. etc.). Has got a lot of Republican brownie points for fighting unions and abolishing collective bargaining in Wisconsin. Subsequently the (big) business lobby loves him. He has the charisma of a wet towel, but he's not a complete retard, and he ticks all the Republican boxes without being an obvious extremist. He has a track-record of electoral success, even cunning, you can sell him as an every man to the middle class, and he's mostly inoffensive to the whole big tent. I don't think the Democrats have much (more) to smear him with either, they would have brought that out before. So with money and support, he's got a good chance to be on the ticket. IF he wants to (he might also want to sit this one out).

But even with this being a midterm election, and even with this being tough races. The Democrats should have been able to hold on to, say, 3 Senate seats, and maybe a dozen or so seats in the House.

But they didn't. It was a bloodbath out there for the Democrats. And that's not explained by all the things people knew months ago, even years ago come into play in midterms.

The problem was that the Democrats were hamstrung from the beginning by Obama, and particularly his record up to date on the economy, and specifically that he wasn't able to deliver for the middleclass (and the youth vote BTW).

It's what Carville told Clinton: "It's the economy, stupid." The Democrats couldn't run on it. The Republicans were able to make the blame game stick.

That's why the Democrats lost as big as they did.

And going forward to 2016, they'll have to do something about that. Blaming it on youth vote turnout won't cut it. They'll have to walk the walk for the middleclass, or come up with a damned good reason why they didn't.

The Obama era is over, the Democrats will have to reinvent themselves all over again ...

And going forward to 2016, they'll have to do something about that. Blaming it on youth vote turnout won't cut it. They'll have to walk the walk for the middleclass, or come up with a damned good reason why they didn't.

The Obama era is over, the Democrats will have to reinvent themselves all over again ...

Well Hilary Clinton is most likely gonna be the nominee in 2016, so the Democratic base is going to be hyped about not only another Clinton, but the first woman president. If the economy improves even a little and Obama doesn't fuck anything up too bad, Hilary could very well annihilate the Republican candidate. After all, Bill Clinton is the only president in the last few decades to have significant amounts of bi-partisan support. Apparently all the people from the Reagan administration that endorsed Obama have gone unnoticed, but whatever.

And going forward to 2016, they'll have to do something about that. Blaming it on youth vote turnout won't cut it. They'll have to walk the walk for the middleclass, or come up with a damned good reason why they didn't.

The Obama era is over, the Democrats will have to reinvent themselves all over again ...

Not at all. Here's how it's going to play out. The Republican congress is going to start passing bill after bill after bill to send to the desk of the President for approval. The Democrats no longer have Harry Reid to block said bills, so Obama himself will now be responsible for the veto. The next two years are going to be about the obstructionist President Obama not passing Republican bills and the partisan Republicans doing everything in their power to shoot down the agenda of our humble, selfless President (depending upon which network you watch).

The Democrats in congress don't have to dirty their hands at all. They sit back, throw Obama under the bus and let the Republicans hang themselves with whatever social issues they try to ram through. 2016, everyone is now sick of Republicans again, Hillary rides in on a white horse and we're back where we started.